Was Zeus some kind of father god?
According to Hesiod’s Theogeny, Zeus was not the most powerful God. He was the son of the Titan King Cronus, who was the son of Gaia and Uranus. There was a scepter of power passed down amongst the leaders of the gods. Zeus took it from Cronus, who took it from Uranus, who was entrusted with it by Nyx, the goddess of night and by far the most powerful entity in the Greek Pantheon, with the possible exception of Ananke, he goddess of destiny. In Homer’s Iliad, the god of sleep, Hypnos, one of Nyx’s son’s, once put Zeus to sleep at the bidding of Hera, Zeus’s wife. Zeus would have smitten him, but Hypnos ran to his mother, whom Zeus was terrified of angering. In Hellenistic mythology, Zeus was more of a ‘leader’ god than an all-powerful father. There were plenty entities that he feared (most of them female). These include Nyx, Gaia, The Fates, Ananke, and Nemesis.
